How Rachel Carson Became a Revolutionary: Environmental Politics and the Public Sphere

Silent Spring is generally considered a foundational text of the modern environmental movement. However, this paper contends that Rachel Carson’s legacy is more mixed than the historical memory about her allows. This essay considers the surprisingly varied reception of Silent Spring over the last five decades. Ultimately, it argues, that assessment that Carson's work was revolutionary reflects the vicissitudes of environmental politics as much as anything intrinsic to the book itself.